Maybe google can buy Metafor and tweak it so we can have natural language searches that work. Remember askjeeves.com? The best idea to come along in searching in a long time, but their results are worthless. In my experience Google gets the best results, but it can be a pain tweaking the query to get what your looking for.
Care to illuminate a little bit? My bill is $39.99 before taxes/fees, and $45.33 after. That's ~13% which isn't too bad considering that my state sales tax is 6%
If your bill is higher because you pay $10 for unlimited txt messeging, and $3 for 411 calls, etc. then don't complain that your being charged higher than the advertised price.
I haven't been in a Blockbuster's in years, but having to buy the movie sounds like something that should be on the advertising posters in small (compared to the main) print.
What surprises me the most is that the program is optional to franchises. I think autonomy of franchises in promotions is probably one of the worst moves a business can make. If McDonalds advertises the Big Macs for 10 cents but the local McD's isn't doing that sale, I'm less likely to go to any McD's anywhere because if a company can't maintain consistincy is their sales and promotions, how can I assume there will be consistency in quality? How can I assume walking into a particular branch of of a store will be worth my time and money.
Google Inc. said late Monday it has agreed to acquire Urchin Software Corp., which makes software to help companies analyze the traffic at their Web sites.
Isn't this what Google does anyway for their advertising? Yousing keywords from your search or email (for gmail) to give the user relevant advertising? It makes sense to me that this company would be something to be of interest to Google. If they can provide advertising that is more relevant to the consumer, the comsumer is more likely to utilize the advertisement, and then Google can command a higher advertising rate based on higher success. Google wins, advertiser wins, consumer wins. Nobody looses.
Maybe I'm missing something here, but how exactly does one ban a protocal? If (and that's a big if) the Supreme Court decides in favor of the RIAA, overturns Betamax, and outlaws p2p file sharing, what then? For the first time in history, software (which is intellectual property) will be made illegal (hacking/cracking tools aren't illegal themselves, but using them on a computer you don't control is, just like p2p software currently isn't illegal, but downloading pirated software/music/movies is).
Since Grokster, kazaa, Azureus, etc. presumably close up shop and take down their websites becuase their businesses were found to be unconstitutional (which is what the Supreme Court acutally decides is the consititutional legality of an issue). No new p2p software is created commercially. Now what?
Well, constitutional protection against ex post facto (Article I, Section 9, Clause 3) means that you would still have the right to have possess p2p software that was on your computer before the Supreme Court decision. You just couldn't use it legally. But for those who are using p2p to download copyrighted content, the legality issue shouldn't be a big issue.
On a related note, programmers with the neccessary wherewithal, will continue to create and update p2p applications...illegaly but will do so none-the-less. Or p2p projects will be created and maintained outside the US. If history has shown us anything, criminalizing a behavior or thought has little effect in stopping the behavior, and tends to give it a glamourizing effect. Example #1: drug use. Example #2: Prohibition.
Or say everybody just walks away from p2p applications all together. Then what, does piracy stop? Of course not. What Microsoft calls "casual piracy" the making of physical, unauthorized copies of copyrighted material has always been a bigger share of piracy than p2p file sharing. Ignoring that issue, what would happen? Instead of downloading illegal content through your p2p client of choice, there would be a resurgence of services like usenet and IRC.
If the Supreme Court had ruled the other way in Betamax, there would have been severe implications, because building hardware is a more difficult enterprise and harder to hide what your doing. But a ruling in favor of the RIAA here wouldn't have half the effect they think it would.
That said, I think it would be historically bad precedent that would criminalize perfectly legal behavior (getting the latest Fedora distribution.
The best way to fight the government is to work with it. Write your support to newspapers. Write your congressperson, they're not all as currupt as you think. At the very least they want to get re-elected and the best way to get re-elected is to support causes popular to your constituency, and oppose causes unpopular to them. Write a detailed, sincere letter, and most of them will respond. But they won't know anything if you don't tell them. Its your job to ask the government to work for you.
when I was in college (when kazaa lite was free), my college blocked the port. I simply subscribed to a tunnel proxy for $5/month and set up Kazaa Lite to connect to the proxy server. The proxy server didn't limit bandwith, and I shared the subscription with 4 friends. For $1/month we all did all the downloading we wanted
In the US (although local codes may differ), you don't need to be licensed or certified in anything at all to install anything. Any old shmuck can install new telephone, cable, electrical, plumbing, ethernet, etc lines and connect them to preexisting connections supplied by the utilities. Plumbing and electrical installations require a licensed plumber/electrician to inspect them to ensure they were done properly and meet all the codes. But armed only with Electricity For Dummies, you can legally rewire your entire house if you wanted, you just need a professional to tell you it works.
As other posts have noted, what the EU is trying to do is keep Windows Media Player from being the de facto standard that everybody either has to use or be marginalized. Unless you want to play DRM'ed windows media files, you can play windows media files (wmv and wma) on WinAmp. I believe XMMS does also. By making WMP optional on desktops, media content providers and sellers can't assume that users are going to have WMP and may look for alternatives.
An antitrust case by the EU against Microsoft can't make requirements of 3rd parties.
When I was in college, to enter the dorms and other "sensitive" areas, you had to swipe your school ID. To purchase food on your meal plan, you had to swipe your ID. You could put money into a debit account to buy things on campus and select off campus stores (like the local gas station), and swipe your ID to use it. The ID sent unencrypted the student's SSN. Anyone with a POS card reader and access to a student ID could retrieve the SSN, and legal name (printed on the front of the ID).
If you lost your ID, it was a simple matter to go down to Student Accounts and get a new one for $10. But since the SSN is used as an ID, the old ID card couldn't be deactivated and the missing one could be used by whoever found it.
Thankfully, last year they switched from using SSN to a 12 digit ID number generated by the college. However, "lost" cards are still usable
"We're seeing more and more cases coming in where we have to break encryption," Lewis said. "What we're finding is that criminals who use encryption usually are higher profile and higher value targets for us because it means from an evidentiary standpoint they have more to hide."
Because we all know that anyone who wants to maintain a modicum of privacy MUST be doing SOMETHING wrong.
If you have a whole hard drive of materials that could be related to the encryption key you're trying to crack, that is extremely beneficial," McNett said. "In the world of encrypted [Microsoft Windows] drives and encrypted zip files, four thousand machines is a sizable force to bring to bear."
Moral of the story, encrypt the entire drive, so there's nothing to fill the customized dictionary with
Of course it you are using Grammar Check to proofread your 2nd grade book report, you're going to run into problems. But if you type the preceding sentence into Word but change "you're" to "your" and do a Grammar Check, it will find no errors.
At the same time, I've had a lot of issues with false positives. In a 20 page term paper, I've had as many as 50. In the above paragraph, it thinks "do a Grammar Check" should be "does a Grammar Check." Most 10 year olds know that "you does a Grammar Check" isn't grammatically correct. Also, "most 10 year olds" completely confused it.
Nothing beats a human proofreader, but that's no excuse to hand your professor (or a friend) a paper to proof that is riddled with errors that could have been fixed in 30 seconds.
Re:Why has corporate America avoided Macs?
on
Hacking Mac OS X
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
1) I'm not saying its right or wrong, but most modern computer users were "brought up" on a Windows environment. As such, most beginner to moderate ability users feel at home using Windows and feel out of place using Linux or Mac OS. I'm even guilty of this. Last time I used a Mac (and it was running OSX), I felt horribly out of place. And despite running linux on my home computer 90% of the time, I'm not willing to give up XP.
2) Most of the support calls I fielded in the week I had that job were not OS specific, but along the lines of "How do I do a mail merge?"
3) A lot of companies use applications that are specific enough in scope that there aren't any ports to linux or Mac. If Company X NEEDS to use Product Y and Product Y is only availble for Windows, then Company X is going to use Windows, and x86 hardware. It's that simple
Google maps does something that neither yahoo maps or mapquest does. It recognizes different names for roads. I have yet to figure out what mapquest/yahoo thinks US Route 1 (a major transportation route in my part of the country) is called. And state highways are even worse. But Goople maps got all the roads first shot.
Re:This is good news.... for me
on
ID Theft Made Easy
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Whenever I leave something that looks vaulable (I never leave anything that actually is valuable) in my car, I leave the door unlocked. If somebody is going to steal a 286 from my backseat, there's no reason for me to have a shattered window. Leave worthless things in plain sight keeps your valuable things safer.
Besides leaving the car door unlocked gives the impression that that theres an alarm in place. Research has shown that the single biggest theft deterent is a window sticker announcing the use of an anti-theft system. The ADT sticker keeps you safer than the alarm system itself.
1) OEM licensed software, Microsoft doesn't support. The OEM is required by the software license.
2) Microsoft already charges for the limited support they do offer. At least phone support. Email support is free, but worthless. Having gone that route, I don't believe anyone actually reads the emails sent, but a computer analyzes it for keywords and sends a boilerplate message based on the keywords. Then in slaps a name on the message to make it look like a real person is responding.
3) Most consumers want to pay up front (or finance), not subscribe to a support service. And what's to keep a user from not subscribing until a problem comes up, getting a 1 yr support contract, and then canceling after the problem is fixed (possibly getting a proration)?
4) Corporations that purchase support, are already getting that support elsewhere. Granted its largely Microsoft rhetoric generated to dupe the masses and make themselves sleep better at night, but they insist that their current model is used to help OEM system builders sell value-added services.
5) On the point someone made earlier about hacking WinXP to get it to be usable on older/lesser hardware, it comes back to the point made earlier in this thread. Selling bloated software is good business for all tha hardware manufacturers whose products are being sold to run the new software. Look at gaming and video cards. New cards come out to better run new games and new games come out to better take advantage of the capabilities of new cards. WinXP isn't going to run well on my PII 233 with 64MB RAM work machine, so if my employer wanted to upgrade to XP, they'd have to buy new hardware. And that makes companies like Dell and HP, happy and supports their profit margins, marketshare, and shareholder dividends.
6) Win98 came out 7 yrs ago. At $10-$15/yr, that comes out to $70-$105. Thats just barely breaking even with the current distribution model. Are the shareholders going to be happy with a business model change that takes longer to see the same profit?
7) It's a good idea, unfortunatly, not grounded on enough reality.
mofe) I just wanted to use the number invented in one of the newspaper comic strips. sorry.
Regulations. Flying (whether a plane or a space ship) is regulated. The higher you go, the more regulations are in place. If your launching a sattelite in the US, building it is the easy part. Getting all the permits can take years. This law is designed to give space tourism a grace period before the FAA can go in and regulate it to death.
Slashdot Mirror
When Linux crashes, the user is at fault.
When holographic media comes to market, a disk the size of a CD/DVD will have the capacity to hold the text of every book ever written
Maybe google can buy Metafor and tweak it so we can have natural language searches that work. Remember askjeeves.com? The best idea to come along in searching in a long time, but their results are worthless. In my experience Google gets the best results, but it can be a pain tweaking the query to get what your looking for.
If your bill is higher because you pay $10 for unlimited txt messeging, and $3 for 411 calls, etc. then don't complain that your being charged higher than the advertised price.
What surprises me the most is that the program is optional to franchises. I think autonomy of franchises in promotions is probably one of the worst moves a business can make. If McDonalds advertises the Big Macs for 10 cents but the local McD's isn't doing that sale, I'm less likely to go to any McD's anywhere because if a company can't maintain consistincy is their sales and promotions, how can I assume there will be consistency in quality? How can I assume walking into a particular branch of of a store will be worth my time and money.
Since Grokster, kazaa, Azureus, etc. presumably close up shop and take down their websites becuase their businesses were found to be unconstitutional (which is what the Supreme Court acutally decides is the consititutional legality of an issue). No new p2p software is created commercially. Now what?
Well, constitutional protection against ex post facto (Article I, Section 9, Clause 3) means that you would still have the right to have possess p2p software that was on your computer before the Supreme Court decision. You just couldn't use it legally. But for those who are using p2p to download copyrighted content, the legality issue shouldn't be a big issue.
On a related note, programmers with the neccessary wherewithal, will continue to create and update p2p applications...illegaly but will do so none-the-less. Or p2p projects will be created and maintained outside the US. If history has shown us anything, criminalizing a behavior or thought has little effect in stopping the behavior, and tends to give it a glamourizing effect. Example #1: drug use. Example #2: Prohibition.
Or say everybody just walks away from p2p applications all together. Then what, does piracy stop? Of course not. What Microsoft calls "casual piracy" the making of physical, unauthorized copies of copyrighted material has always been a bigger share of piracy than p2p file sharing. Ignoring that issue, what would happen? Instead of downloading illegal content through your p2p client of choice, there would be a resurgence of services like usenet and IRC.
If the Supreme Court had ruled the other way in Betamax, there would have been severe implications, because building hardware is a more difficult enterprise and harder to hide what your doing. But a ruling in favor of the RIAA here wouldn't have half the effect they think it would.
That said, I think it would be historically bad precedent that would criminalize perfectly legal behavior (getting the latest Fedora distribution.
The best way to fight the government is to work with it. Write your support to newspapers. Write your congressperson, they're not all as currupt as you think. At the very least they want to get re-elected and the best way to get re-elected is to support causes popular to your constituency, and oppose causes unpopular to them. Write a detailed, sincere letter, and most of them will respond. But they won't know anything if you don't tell them. Its your job to ask the government to work for you.
when I was in college (when kazaa lite was free), my college blocked the port. I simply subscribed to a tunnel proxy for $5/month and set up Kazaa Lite to connect to the proxy server. The proxy server didn't limit bandwith, and I shared the subscription with 4 friends. For $1/month we all did all the downloading we wanted
In the US (although local codes may differ), you don't need to be licensed or certified in anything at all to install anything. Any old shmuck can install new telephone, cable, electrical, plumbing, ethernet, etc lines and connect them to preexisting connections supplied by the utilities. Plumbing and electrical installations require a licensed plumber/electrician to inspect them to ensure they were done properly and meet all the codes. But armed only with Electricity For Dummies, you can legally rewire your entire house if you wanted, you just need a professional to tell you it works.
An antitrust case by the EU against Microsoft can't make requirements of 3rd parties.
If you lost your ID, it was a simple matter to go down to Student Accounts and get a new one for $10. But since the SSN is used as an ID, the old ID card couldn't be deactivated and the missing one could be used by whoever found it.
Thankfully, last year they switched from using SSN to a 12 digit ID number generated by the college. However, "lost" cards are still usable
At the same time, I've had a lot of issues with false positives. In a 20 page term paper, I've had as many as 50. In the above paragraph, it thinks "do a Grammar Check" should be "does a Grammar Check." Most 10 year olds know that "you does a Grammar Check" isn't grammatically correct. Also, "most 10 year olds" completely confused it.
Nothing beats a human proofreader, but that's no excuse to hand your professor (or a friend) a paper to proof that is riddled with errors that could have been fixed in 30 seconds.
2) Most of the support calls I fielded in the week I had that job were not OS specific, but along the lines of "How do I do a mail merge?"
3) A lot of companies use applications that are specific enough in scope that there aren't any ports to linux or Mac. If Company X NEEDS to use Product Y and Product Y is only availble for Windows, then Company X is going to use Windows, and x86 hardware. It's that simple
Google maps does something that neither yahoo maps or mapquest does. It recognizes different names for roads. I have yet to figure out what mapquest/yahoo thinks US Route 1 (a major transportation route in my part of the country) is called. And state highways are even worse. But Goople maps got all the roads first shot.
Besides leaving the car door unlocked gives the impression that that theres an alarm in place. Research has shown that the single biggest theft deterent is a window sticker announcing the use of an anti-theft system. The ADT sticker keeps you safer than the alarm system itself.
1) OEM licensed software, Microsoft doesn't support. The OEM is required by the software license. 2) Microsoft already charges for the limited support they do offer. At least phone support. Email support is free, but worthless. Having gone that route, I don't believe anyone actually reads the emails sent, but a computer analyzes it for keywords and sends a boilerplate message based on the keywords. Then in slaps a name on the message to make it look like a real person is responding. 3) Most consumers want to pay up front (or finance), not subscribe to a support service. And what's to keep a user from not subscribing until a problem comes up, getting a 1 yr support contract, and then canceling after the problem is fixed (possibly getting a proration)? 4) Corporations that purchase support, are already getting that support elsewhere. Granted its largely Microsoft rhetoric generated to dupe the masses and make themselves sleep better at night, but they insist that their current model is used to help OEM system builders sell value-added services. 5) On the point someone made earlier about hacking WinXP to get it to be usable on older/lesser hardware, it comes back to the point made earlier in this thread. Selling bloated software is good business for all tha hardware manufacturers whose products are being sold to run the new software. Look at gaming and video cards. New cards come out to better run new games and new games come out to better take advantage of the capabilities of new cards. WinXP isn't going to run well on my PII 233 with 64MB RAM work machine, so if my employer wanted to upgrade to XP, they'd have to buy new hardware. And that makes companies like Dell and HP, happy and supports their profit margins, marketshare, and shareholder dividends. 6) Win98 came out 7 yrs ago. At $10-$15/yr, that comes out to $70-$105. Thats just barely breaking even with the current distribution model. Are the shareholders going to be happy with a business model change that takes longer to see the same profit? 7) It's a good idea, unfortunatly, not grounded on enough reality. mofe) I just wanted to use the number invented in one of the newspaper comic strips. sorry.
Regulations. Flying (whether a plane or a space ship) is regulated. The higher you go, the more regulations are in place. If your launching a sattelite in the US, building it is the easy part. Getting all the permits can take years. This law is designed to give space tourism a grace period before the FAA can go in and regulate it to death.
Last I checked, hydrogen and oxygen aren't fossil fuels.